ASSESSING ORGANIC PRODUCTION EFFICIENCY: A STOCHASTIC DISTANCE FUNCTION APPROACH

Luanne Lohr and Timothy Park

No 36244, 2004 Annual Meeting, June 30-July 2, 2004, Honolulu, Hawaii from Western Agricultural Economics Association

Abstract: A stochastic distance function frontier was estimated using data from a national survey of organic farmers to evaluate the effect of farm-specific attributes on efficiency. Farm-specific and regional variables that shift efficiency were incorporated into the multioutput distance function, including organic farming experience, use of soil-improving inputs, and farmer involvement in research. Participation in research projects reduces the level of on-farm technical inefficiency with mean technical efficiency of participating farmers 25 percent higher than nonparticipating farmers. The results suggest that differences in productivity across organic farmers are closely linked to input use and observable management decisions.

Keywords: Productivity; Analysis (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 29
Date: 2004
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://ageconsearch.umn.edu/record/36244/files/sp04lo01.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ags:waeaho:36244

DOI: 10.22004/ag.econ.36244

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in 2004 Annual Meeting, June 30-July 2, 2004, Honolulu, Hawaii from Western Agricultural Economics Association Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by AgEcon Search ().